James Westover

Address: 107 Virginia Hills Drive Unit 4, Martinez, CA 94553
Phone: 585-429-0817
Email: james@westover.dev

Summary

I am an avid Python developer with a true passion for its flexibility and performance. I have a deep interest in large data problems. I was previously engaged in the Autonomous Driving space and have worked on data capture related problems in the mapping space. Previously, I was involved with software efforts around crowd-sourced mapping and have developed data warehousing platforms in ad tech. I’ve had the great opportunity to work on interesting problems with great people. I have held a variety of hats throughout my career and am at home in the midst of complicated technical problems. I am now an ex-scientist leaving my PhD for the chance to explore computational problems in industry.
Specialties: Mapping, API development, Distributed Computing, Databases, Virtualization, Computer Simulations, Python, Cluster management, Data Analysis.

Technical Qualifications

  • Computational specialist with experience in big data, data warehousing, operating systems, numerical modeling, systems administration, database administration, data analysis, computational mathematical methods.
  • Deep understanding of basic science and engineering with a background in theoretical quantum chemistry, condensed matter physics, solid-state physics, mechanical engineering techniques, and electrical engineering techniques. Strong mathematical background in continuous mathematics, and probability.
  • Programming experience in Python(2.4-3.*), JavaScript, Shell scripting(Windows, Mac/Unix/Bash/Linux), FORTRAN(77,90,95), C++, LATEX typesetting, HTML, CSS, MySQL, PHP, Java, Golang.
  • Modern DevOps tools like Kubernetes, Docker, Jenkins, Ansible, Immutable infrastructure, AWS.
  • Experienced in setting up RESTful API using Python WSGI, Django, and other micro frameworks such as Flask.
  • Versed in Python IO loop-based frameworks like Tornado.
  • Extensive experience with Python packages: numpy, scipy, pandas, various database connectors, selenium.
  • Deep understanding of HTTP protocol.
  • Database experience in both NoSQL and SQL databases: Cassandra, Hive, HBase, Elasticsearch (Apache Solr), Amazon Redshift, MySQL, Postgres, Oracle, Redis, Memcache, Druid, Zookeeper. Experience with messaging systems such as Kafka and RabbitMQ.
  • Expertise in both traditional MapReduce/YARN/Hadoop applications as well as generic map reduce techniques.
  • Expertise in streaming compute frameworks primarily Apache Storm. Experience with Apache Spark.
  • Experience with GIS-based systems and tools such as OpenLayers, GeoJSON protocol, Geoserver, and PostGIS, Shapely, GEOS, GDAL.
  • Data Science experience with probabilistic counting using HyperLogLog++ and MinHash techniques.
  • Experience in multithreaded, multiprocess, event-driven Python applications. Experience in novel parallelization and MPI(MPICH2, OpenMPI, and OMP) in both Python and FORTRAN.
  • Experience in constructing computer clusters including a private cloud in a small enterprise situation. Built both disked and diskless clusters using a variety of packages including Eucalyptus, ROCKS, XenServer. Some clusters included NAS disk hosts.
  • Familiar with many commercial software packages including but not limited to R, SPSS, Mathematica, Maple, Matlab, SciLab, LabView, Autodesk Inventor, AutoCAD, Microsoft Office, iWork suite, Adobe, Logger Pro.
  • Top Skills: Python, Django, Amazon ECS, AWS SageMaker

Experience

Urbn

Software Engineer
September 2024 - Present

  • Help maintain Django app for managing URBN’s internal product catalog
  • Working on improving build systems
  • Helping with their task processing systems using celery and Kafka

Neher Data Systems

CTO
January 2023 - Present

  • Technical leader for projects. Engage in contract work for various businesses and government agencies.
  • Notable bids/projects:
    • NJ Transit authority bid for real-time passenger occupancy based on video feeds coming from the train. Proof of concept built on top of AWS using ECS for deployment, Elastic IPs, and different ML/AI products within AWS.
    • ECS containers deployed were python based microservices including using Django for a serving layer in ECS. Used Amazon Keyspaces and S3 for storage for the pipeline configuration of microservices.
    • Ghosthunter app: Developed a React Native app which interfaces with the POC built for NJTA to do basic object detection and bounding boxes from images captured on the device. Released on Google Play Store and the Apple App Store using the Expo services.
    • Ghosthunter app 2: Extending the react native app to do more work on device for producing detections.

Uber

Staff Software Engineer
February 2021 - October 2022 (1 year 9 months)

  • Postmates Acquisition and Navigation Team at Uber.
  • Key role in the integration process following the Postmates acquisition, focusing on system maintenance and continuous on-call duties.
  • Developed data deletion strategies across distributed databases in different clouds, maintaining compliance with data regulations. This was done with GO based microservices
  • Joined Uber’s navigation team, contributing to one of Uber’s largest services (java based 1400+ nodes per data center), responsible for mapping services for all Uber applications.
  • Developed on-device software to ingest new data from the cloud to improve inferences regarding off-route detection.
  • Developed and enhanced python based simulation software for testing off-route detection algorithm changes.
  • While the detection engine was written in Java for inclusion in both the iOS app(via transpiling) and Android app all the data loading and multiprocessing based parallelization for testing different configurations was done in python.

Postmates Inc.

Sr Software Engineer 2
June 2020 - February 2021 (9 months)

  • Part of the core infrastructure team responsible for main monorepo-based applications.
  • Coordinated and executed a successful migration of the monorepo from Python 2 to Python 3.
  • Improved testing infrastructure using a distributed testing approach across Kubernetes pods.

Uber

Sr Software Engineer
January 2019 - June 2020 (1 year 6 months)

  • Founding member of the Python Platform team at Uber. Supported all Python development at Uber.
  • Handled large scale Python 2 to 3 migration across the whole company.
  • Scraped and built a full set of dependencies for all Python-based microservices, analyzed the graph, and targeted and completed the transcoding needed for the top 200 dependencies covering more than 90% of all services.
  • Notable work regarding python 2 -> 3 included an overhaul of the Uber open source tornado based thrift encoding library tchannel-python

Software Engineering Manager
February 2018 - January 2019 (1 year)

  • Engaged with different types of distributed systems.
  • Founded and built a team focused on centralizing location data from the fleet.
  • Ensured compliance with GDPR regulations for data collection from both the mapping fleet and gig worker drivers.

HERE Technologies

Software Engineering Manager
April 2016 - February 2018 (1 year 11 months)

  • Led the Capture Systems Software team, part of the Highly Autonomous Driving effort.
  • Built the team from 2 to 14 members over the course of the year.
  • Led the design and development of small scale collection systems and a new generation of HERE True capture vehicles.

Senior Software Architect
April 2015 - April 2016 (1 year 1 month)

  • Involved in large-scale distributed systems efforts.
  • Spearheaded a project using Apache Storm for stream processing to conduct real-time and batch analytics for the company’s mapping fleet.
  • Launched new python based microservices built using tornado for serving the data processed by our python based nodes in our Storm cluster as well as managing our batch workflow on Storm

SkilledUp

Senior Python Engineer
January 2015 - May 2015 (5 months)

  • Backend Python engineer developing a Flask-based API.
  • Established an extensive unit and functional testing framework.

Sonobi

Software Engineer
December 2013 - January 2015 (1 year 2 months)

  • Built a RabbitMQ-based distributed job processing system using multiprocessing and multithreading in Python for analytics jobs.
  • Engaged in significant exploration and experimentation with log analytics using Kafka, Logstash, and Hadoop.
  • Developed an extensive data warehousing solution to manage the large influx of data from over 250 million daily impressions served.

Valencia Community College

Adjunct Faculty
December 2010 - May 2014 (3 years 6 months)

  • Taught introductory Physics and Astronomy courses.
  • Developed and implemented new hybrid mode physics courses.

University of Central Florida

Graduate Teaching Associate
August 2009 - December 2013 (4 years 5 months)

  • Teaching assistant with a specialty of lab curriculum development for ‘scale-up’ introductory classes focusing on high-speed video analysis.
  • Developed a specialized lab manual for the studio introductory physics I course with a strong emphasis on student-driven learning.

University of Rochester

Assistant Systems Admin
October 2006 - October 2012 (6 years 1 month)

  • Worked extensively with several Beowulf clusters built using the clustering software in ROCKS for MPICH and other types of distributed computation.
  • Constructed a cluster based on Eucalyptus (the open-source basis for EC2 at AWS) and later transitioned to VMware’s product for virtualization.
  • Provided support for Unix, Linux, Mac, and Windows systems, and performed Linux administration.

Education

Quantic School of Business and Technology

Master of Business Administration (MBA), Business Administration and Management, General
2017 - 2017

University of Central Florida

PhD, Physics
2009 - 2013

University of Central Florida

MS, Physics
2009 - 2010

University of Rochester

BS, Physics, Applied Mathematics
2006 - 2009

Publications

‘Metallization of the β-SiC(100) 3X2 Surface: a DFT Investigation’

James Westover, Hamid Oughaddou, Hanna Enriquez, Abdelkader Kara

‘Electronic Structure of an organic/metal interface: Pentacene/Cu(110)’

Abdelkader Kara, Kathrin Müller, Thomas Brugger, James Westover, Thamas Greber, and Thomas Jung

‘Initial velocity V-shapes of young asteroid families’

Bryce T. Bolin, Kevin J. Walsh, Alessandro Morbidelli, Marco Delbo

  • Acknowledgement: “BTB would like to acknowledge James W. Westover for thought-provoking discussions on the implementation of large-scale computing resources and algorithms that were used in the completion of this work.”